Well, it's the coaching equivalent of a player taking it easy one some plays during a game to try and ensure he has more energy later in the game, tactically deciding when and when not to give 100% effort.

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"The worst thing that ever happened in sports was sports radio, and the internet is sports radio on steroids with lower IQs.” -- Brian Burke, former Toronto Maple Leafs senior adviser, at the 2013 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference

Well, it's pretty brilliant if you ask me... Secondly, as far as odds go, it's better to "give up" the game you had a greater chance of losing in the first place.

From a statistical perspective this is not quite right.

It's better to sit them in the game where their absence increases the chances of losing by the least.

This may or may not be the game against the better opponent.

Sounds like the exact same thing to me, just worded differently.

It's not.

Let me give an example.

Suppose if you don't sit anyone, you have a 70% chance of losing to the good team, and a 30% chance of losing to the bad team.

And, suppose if you sit players against the good team your chance of losing only goes to 80%, while if you sit players against the bad team your chance of losing goes up to 60%.

Better to sit players against the good team. You only increase your chance of losing by 10% instead of 30%.

What the numbers look like will depend on the actual games, and how much the percentages change will depend on a lot of things (like match ups at each position).

But the principle should be based on the change in the chances of losing.

The end result is still the same as I suggested. The chances of the way you are explaining it having a different outcome are probably non-existant.

Not worth my time to continue to debate something that Doc doesn't do anyway.

Well, if the numbers were different the right answer would be different.

If sitting players against the good team increased your chances of losing to 100%, and sitting them against the bad team increased your chances of losing to 40% (which seems entirely possible to me), then you'd be better off sitting them against the bad team.